


look what i found, no need for searching;

by hizzie



Category: Descendants (2015), Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, implied malvie / past bendrey, mentions of bal, mentions of chaudrey, oh yeah this is like Audrey's journey throughout the movies (d1-d3), uhhh what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:34:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19255933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hizzie/pseuds/hizzie
Summary: All her life, there had been only one plan.





	look what i found, no need for searching;

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so. Here's what happened.
> 
> During a conversation about how Thank U, Next by Ariana was a song that really could be related to Evie and Audrey as characters, this idea came to me. And then last night's trailer happened and Evie held Audrey's hand and basically I wrote this entire thing in a few hours. It's mostly an introspective fic and it's on canonverse (which is a new for me, because I always write AUs), so bare with me! I have no idea what's happening in D3, so of course this is purely fiction and out of my own head (but I'm also putting it out there in the universe, so who knows!). 
> 
> I love love love this pairing and I plan on writing more for them so I hope you enjoy this! <3 
> 
> (the only real disclaimer is that this story is completely inspired by thank u, next by ariana grande.)

They make sense.

Ben and Audrey… they make sense. It’s the expected. They’ve been friends since they were toddlers, their royal play dates as children were premeditated, calculated. Planned.

Ben is nice, too. Audrey thinks he’s the sweetest boy she’s ever met, and she’s glad that if she _has_ to marry a prince… well, then, she’s glad it’s Ben. She trusts him. Loves him, even.

She’s always known that she’d marry a prince. Always. It’s what happened to her mother, to her grandmother, and to her great grandmother and to all the other ones before her. She’d marry Ben, become a queen, and then rule Auradon beside Ben.

It made sense.

And then it didn’t.

* * *

 

Ben’s been distracted lately.

Audrey can’t blame him; well, at least not too much. She guesses it makes sense that Ben’s too busy with the new kids to spend time with her. Her common sense reminds her that that’s just him doing his job as a prince and future king, not whatever else that her anxious mind is trying to come up with.

But still… she’s his girlfriend. He should at least _try_ not to go an entire day without speaking to her for less than five minutes before he runs off to wherever those villain spawns were - one spawn in particular.

It’s not the nicest thought and certainly not something her parents would be proud of, but Audrey knows that she wouldn’t be so… annoyed… at the proclamation to bring the Villain Kids to Auradon if Ben had told her he’d bring Maleficent’s daughter. If he hadn’t just casually mentioned it about five minutes before they walked outside to greet them. If Mal wasn’t so… Mal.

Audrey isn’t stupid. She’s not blind, either. Mal isn’t ugly. She’s pretty, and she has pretty eyes, and her hair is cool and she’s… different. And she hadn’t missed the interactions between her and Ben from the get go - there was something there, a spark, something that Audrey had never experienced or felt with Ben before. It was unnerving.

Audrey hates to say this, but she felt… threatened.

All her life, she’d had one job. One simple goal. To be made queen beside Ben. To rule Auradon together. That was the plan -- not just hers, either! It seemed that the more the days passed, the more Ben forgot all about it until Audrey couldn’t deny it anymore. The more time she spent without him, the more she realized that her life had been so consumed by him and becoming a queen and being _perfect, perfect, perfect_ that she wasn’t even sure where she stood now. And Mal…

Well, Mal was becoming popular, too. And Audrey hated it. It all seemed to come so effortlessly to her -- so easily, Mal had won over the girls at the school with what Audrey was _sure_ was illegal magic! And Ben -- God! Ben didn’t even care. He was just as taken by Mal as everyone else seemed to be.

And it’s not like Audrey could count with Chad either - Chad had his own problems, it seemed. Something about Evie, a mirror, and homework. And then something about Jay and tourney. Chad’s not too big on details.

“You okay?” She hears from the corner of the room, and Audrey snaps her attention from the empty spot next to her dresser to find Lonnie, her roommate, looking at her with concern in her warm eyes. Audrey tries to gather her thoughts while another part of her brain thinks softly, almost ashamed, about how Lonnie looks pretty with this new hair style -- and how the golden hour coming from the window and hitting her face just right makes her look like sunshine personified --

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Audrey chuckles, shaking her head and those thoughts away. She shouldn’t be thinking about Lonnie like that! Lonnie’s her friend, and her roommate, and it’s _weird_! Don’t be _weird_ , Audrey. God.

“It’s okay,” Lonnie says, warm as ever, a smile on her face that exposes her dimples and makes Audrey’s heart skip a beat, almost as if rebelling against her chest and her own wishes. Audrey gulps, almost as if trying to swallow the feeling down. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Audrey waves her off, chuckling, “I was actually just trying to remember what class I had next,” she lies, closing her notebook and shoving it in her baby pink bag and standing up from the hairdresser, “I just remembered it, anyway. I have to go. Bye, Lonnie.”

She says it all in a rush, and Lonnie watches her with furrowed eyebrows and an amused look in her eyes that makes Audrey want to run.

She closes the door behind her and immediately closes her eyes, exhaling and trying to sort her thoughts out.

She really, really, _really desperately_ needed Ben to get his shit together and remember that they’re meant to be. For Audrey’s sake.

(Ben doesn’t. In fact, he does the exact opposite -- and still, exactly what Audrey’s worst anxiety induced thoughts feared so desperately. Audrey grasps at straws, trying to find a way out of this mess. In her mind, her thoughts scream: _perfect, perfect, perfect._

She kisses Chad, and it still feels like lying.)

* * *

“Are we like, dating now?” Chad asks as he sits on the end of her bed, his hands on top of his lap as he fiddles with his thumbs. Audrey is lying on her bed, her pillow thrown across her face as she tries really hard not to press it down and suffocate herself in frustration -- really, she was _that_ dramatic.

She doesn’t respond, because she doesn’t know what to say, and Chad continues, “Because like… don’t get me wrong, I love you and stuff, you’re my best friend,” he pauses, as if choosing his words wisely, “but I, um…”, another pause, and then Chad lets out a breath and Audrey moves the pillow slightly so she can peer at him curiously. His back is to her, but she can see him shaking his head and taking another breath before he finally continues, “But I didn’t know you felt that way about me.”

“Oh,” Audrey says, sitting up and then moving so she’s closer to Chad, “Yeah, I mean…” the words weight on her chest, they feel wrong. The words taste bitter on her mouth, too, and Audrey thinks this is like when Merryweather gives her fairy medicine to cure her cough. “You know…”

She trails off, because _she_ doesn’t know. The plan was never Chad. The plan was Ben. The plan was marrying him, becoming a queen, and then ruling Auradon by his side. The plan was never… kiss Chad right after Ben bulldozed the whole thing with whatever the hell that impromptu performance was.

Chad’s silent, and Audrey’s almost shocked by the look on his face as he studies her. She’s never seen him look so serious - so pensive. It’s almost off putting. Chad’s looking at her like he’s looking for something, and she doesn’t know what it is, so she just looks back at him and waits. He seems to find it a moment later, because then he nods resolutely and gives her a small smile.

“Do you want to get ice cream with me?” Chad asks easily. Audrey frowns at him, confused and his smile becomes a smirk, “We may not know what we’re doing, but how about we not know together? That could be fun, right?”

Audrey laughs, “Right.”

Chad grins and holds his hand out for her to take, “So, ice cream?”

She takes his hand, “Ice cream.”

* * *

She’s never had alcohol, so it’s understandable that tonight would be her first time having a sip of it - or, well, a whole lot of sips of it. The party after the eventful coronation is still going, even when the latest hours of the night transition into the earlier hours of the morning. Most of the adults had already gone off, leaving the teens to it, and that had been when the stronger drinks had been snuck in and passed on.

Audrey walks off from the dancefloor, one hand fanning her face and the other holding the hem of her pink dress that had become a knee length dress as soon as the party had started. She knows she looks disgusting, probably - she’s sweaty, and her face is flushed, and her makeup is probably running from all the dancing and sweating. Her hair is sticking to the back of her neck and it’s making her feel warmer, so she takes her hands to her hair and twists it into a low, lazy bun so it’s not so annoying anymore. She continues walking, only pausing to take off her heels and hold them in her hands as she makes her way to the benches all the way across the campus, distant but still in the party.

Audrey really needed to cool off.

When she finally gets to her destination, she sits down and closes her eyes, joining her legs at the ankles as she completely drops her back on the back support of the bench. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, exhaling a moment after and smiling when she hears the intro to one of her favorite songs kick in. She can hear the sound of her friends dancing and screaming on the dancefloor, even from the distance, and it’s nice. It feels like a little break but one that she doesn’t have to miss out on the fun to have.

There’s no one around her -- well, there is, but whoever this is is completely passed out to the world on the bench beside hers, so it’s like she’s alone. She watches the colors in the sky and feels the wind hitting her face softly, cooling her down, and she gets so caught up in the feeling of whatever this was, that she misses it when someone approaches her from behind.

“Do you mind if I sit?” A voice asks from over her shoulder, behind the bench, and Audrey all but jumps back in reality at the sound of it. She knows that voice. The smoothness, raspiness, almost teasing nature of that voice can’t ever go unnoticed. Audrey looks over her shoulder, and her brown eyes see _blue, blue, blue_ …!

She blinks and tries again.

“Sure,” Audrey says, finally, her voice tiny and unrecognizable. Truth be told, she doesn’t know how to act around the villain kids. She had danced with Jay earlier, had had a cute little moment with Mal as well, even danced with the girl beside her now _plus_ Lonnie just as the party had begun. But this was different somehow; it felt more personal — real.

“Are all parties in Auradon like this?” Evie asks, curious. There’s a tinge of content in her voice, exposed by the airiness that enlaces her every word. It makes Audrey smile minimally.

“Well, not all of them,” Audrey responds almost prontly, “Tonight’s been… new. In every way I can imagine.”

“Oh,” Evie catches, and then she chuckles lowly and shakes her head, “Yeah. I suppose so.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Audrey asks, because she might as well _try_.

Evie takes a moment to answer, “Yeah, I think I am.”

“You think?”

Audrey watched as Evie’s brown eyes run over the scene ahead of them, stopping suddenly and changing her whole expression. Audrey frowns minimally, curious, and follows Evie’s line of view only for her frown to deepen when she sees Ben and Mal dancing together.

She doesn’t know how she feels about them yet.

She’s glad Ben’s happy?

Whatever.

But she watches Evie watch them, and there’s something extremely familiar about the way her brown eyes look almost desperate, her eyebrows come together in a frown, her lips almost pout.

“I’m happy for Mal,” Evie says finally, but her eyes aren’t in it. Her eyes tell Audrey a completely different thing — something that Audrey thinks she can understand. Something that speaks to Audrey in a way that she thinks only Evie and her can understand.

“I’m happy for Ben,” Audrey says, and it makes them both laugh minimally at the blatant lies that they know go way deeper than they could possibly voice right now.

Audrey watches in silence as Evie watches Ben and Mal dancing in silence, and she thinks about how right from the beginning she had all but raised a wall between her and the villain kids, Evie in specific, and hadn’t been able to _see_ them for what they were.

Evie had come to Auradon in look for a prince. She knows that because she knows the stories, she knows what they say about Evie’s mom. She knows that because she’d seen the way she’d acted with Ben, she’d heard what Chad had told her. She was looking for a prince. She was looking for perfection. For the life that she, as Audrey supposed, had been told her whole life that she was meant for.

And yet, as Audrey watches the way Evie’s brown eyes reflect _purple, purple, purple_ , Audrey can’t help but think that their similarities ran a little deeper than she cared to elaborate right now.

* * *

Chad and her are on and off again, rinse and repeat, in a cycle of dysfunction that Audrey honestly wasn’t surprised to be dealing with when dating someone like Chad Charming.

He’s one of her best friends; well, he’s her best friend. Audrey knows him with the back of her hand, and he knows _her._ They know each other and know each other’s secrets and just _know._ The things they haven’t been able to talk about — _know._

She calls it off again on a Wednesday morning after Chad says something that irritates her at the breakfast table and she ignores the looks of their friends as Chad acts like he’d been stabbed four times by it. It’s all an act, somehow — they’re on again, off again, rinse, repeat. They don’t kiss anymore, they don’t hold hands. They’re just friends who have titles that they’re not so sure they ever wanted in the first place.

But Chad’s dramatic, and so is she, and the way Chad storms off with his bowl of cereal almost makes Audrey laugh if it weren’t for the annoying looks of their friends around them. She pretends she doesn’t see them, and she pretends she doesn’t hear it when Doug, who’s always following Evie around and acting like he knows _everything,_ says something about Chad that wasn’t supposed to be funny, but it was considering it came from him.

“I don’t know why he’s surprised; I mean, Audrey doesn’t even like him like that,” Doug comments lowly, as if thinking Audrey couldn’t hear him. Carlos takes a sip of his coffee in silence, his eyes trained on Evie, and Audrey maintains her head low so they don’t see her looking.

“You think?” Jay asks, his mouth filled with toast and lips shining with butter. Evie wrinkles her nose at him and Audrey thinks that Evie looks rather pretty today.

“Yeah, I mean, there’s no real spark there, is it?” Doug shrugs. “It’d be sad to be in a relationship like that, is all.”

Silence falls over them after that, and it’s _so loud_ that Audrey looks up completely to glance at the other end of the table — Jay and Carlos are chewing their food and watching Doug, silently, and Evie has her eyes down to her plate and she looks… guilty.

Doug seems oblivious to it all, and it almost makes Audrey laugh, in a mean, sadistic way. But she doesn’t, because princesses don’t feel pleasure or amusement at another’s suffering.

With that, she drops her fork to her plate and stands up, making her way back to her dorm to get started with the day.

When she comes in, she bumps into a warm Lonnie wrapped in a towel, her hair up in a lazy bun and a small smile on her face at the sight of her friend. Audrey tries to pretend she doesn’t see the tiny droplets of water on her friend’s tanned, well structured shoulders, and she tries to pretend she doesn’t notice the flush in her friend’s skin from the hot water. She also tries to pretend she doesn’t notice the way Lonnie makes her feel, either.

“Oh, you came just in time,” Lonnie says, “I just left the shower, so it’s all yours.”

“Oh, I’m good, thanks,” Audrey says, willing her well practiced voice not to fail her now. “I showered before breakfast. You were still asleep, as usual.”

Lonnie smiles and moves across the room then, her hands coming together to keep the towel in place on her chest and Audrey tries her _very hardest_ not to let her eyes roam over tanned, strong back and pretty neck and — _don’t be weird, Audrey. Don’t be weird. Stop._

Audrey forces her eyesight to leave her friend and she sets to getting her bag and her supplies for the day from her side of the room and tries her very hardest not to look in Lonnie’s direction as she hears the sound of zipping and fabric and a towel being thrown on the floor.

She counts to ten mentally, and then counts again, and wills her voice to be normal as she answers to Lonnie’s questions about her day and the breakfast they’re serving this morning.

Once Lonnie walks back in the bathroom Audrey feels like she can breathe again, and she shouts a quick goodbye over her shoulder as she all but runs out of their room.

Chad. She needs to find Chad.

(She breaks up with Chad again two days later before she leaves for a spa trip with Fauna, Flora and Merryweather.

He pretends it’s the end of the world again.)

* * *

Audrey doesn’t feel bad about missing the Cotillion. No, not really. The plan before they left for the spa trip was that they would be back just in time for the event, and Audrey wasn’t all too excited for it, either.

It’s not that she’s not over Ben. She is. Well.

Kind of.

She’s over _Ben_ . Over him. She doesn’t care that _Ben’s_ dating someone else. She doesn’t _care_ when she sees them kissing or laughing or sees them in all those damned posters everywhere. She’s over him. She is.

But.

But she’s not exactly over what _him_ represented. The life that she was supposed to lead, the life that her family had brought her up to have. She’s not over losing _perfect, perfect, perfect_ and not having an excuse — an out — from _weird,_ from _look away, stop staring._

She tries, ( _so, so hard,_ ) but it’s _so, so hard._

She feels like she’d been brainwashed. It’s not the perfect word for it, but it’s close. Deep down, she knows that perfection isn’t real. She knows that no one can force a destiny that isn’t theirs. She _knows_ that. But she can’t believe it — can’t convince herself to let that go.

But God, how she wanted to.

Chad helps her with her bags as they walk down the hallways of Auradon Prep towards Audrey’s dorm, and they’re silent for a moment until the blonde boy speaks up, his voice almost unrecognizable.

“This is really it, right?” Chad asks, his eyes cast on the floor as he walks, the cape that Evie had made him flowing behind him as he walked. Audrey wants to smile, because Evie _knew_ Chad. The crown, the cape, the suit — it was perfect it was so fitting of the wannabe king.

(Just like she guesses a big pink gown and an even bigger crown would be fit for her.)

She shakes her head at the bitter, self deprecating joke at herself.

“What do you mean?” Audrey asks, finally. She knows what he means. But she can’t say it.

Chad calls her out on it, “You know what I mean.”

Audrey sighs, wills her dorm to just get closer.

“I don’t know, Chad.”

“You do,” Chad says, and his tone isn’t forceful. It’s low and kind and just the way Audrey knew him to be when the eyes weren’t on him, “You and I know what we have to do. We’re just scared, right? I know I’m scared. Are you?”

“I don’t know how to move on,” Audrey shrugs, trying to diminish the loaded admission with the nonchalant action.

“It’s scary, isn’t it?” Chad asks, his voice practically wavering down the halls. “Change.”

“Yeah,” Audrey agrees, because boy, isn’t that the understatement of the year. Chad looks down at the carpeted floor again and they make a turn to the hallway where Audrey’s room was at.

“But I guess it catches up to you if you keep running from it.”

Audrey pauses in her tracks, stares at Chad’s back until the boy with the fluffy hair and the crown on his head realizes she’s not following him anymore. He turns to her with raised eyebrows, eyes expectant, and Audrey smirks.

“Aren’t you wise?”

Chad rolls his eyes, “Shut up, I’m serious.”

“Yeah, I know, you’re right,” Audrey says, stops in front of her door and takes the key to unlock it. “I guess it’s time we face the music, huh?”

“I hear it can be quite a tune,” Chad jokes from behind her, following her in with her bags and setting them down. Audrey sighs.

“I don’t doubt it.”

* * *

 

Thankfully, she’d made it in time for the party, and not the actual ceremony — that, according to Jane and Lonnie, wasn’t even the usual ceremony, if the huge dragon and the huge octopus battling in the sea was anything to go by. Audrey had missed the whole drama, and she was kind of bummed about it. Maybe if she hadn’t missed it, the whole “time to face the music” thing would be easier if she had a distraction.

But no, when she’s finally ready to join them, the ship is already back at the coast and the music is loud and the sound of laughter and singing and chatter tells Audrey that the worst was well over now.

She gets in the ship with Chad, his hand on her lower back as he leads her in and they stop at the top of the staircase leading to the dance floor to greet Lumiére and… Ben and Mal.

The couple looks ecstatic, happy, silly grins on their faces and their eyes warm and _happy, happy, happy_. Ben’s crown is somewhat crooked and it’s visible to the eye where Mal has an influence on Ben, and where Ben has an influence on Mal, as the girl holds her gown with a silly grin of a newly made Lady of the Court.

Somehow, it fits her.

“Audrey! You made it!” Ben exclaims, his tone always happy and kind and  _Ben._ Audrey smiles.

“Couldn’t miss it,” Audrey replies, and if she’s lying, she doesn’t know. She turns her brown eyes to Mal and the purple haired girl is watching her with a small smile, almost as if embarrassed but at the same time happy that Audrey’s there and just _happy._ “Congratulations, Mal.”

“Oh, thanks, Audrey,” Mal says, and her tone and her smile are tentative. Their relationship has always been like that, really. They don’t hate each other — no, Audrey doesn’t hate Mal. But it’s far too complicated, and it’s awkward, too. Awkward, because they know that Audrey would’ve been the one standing in Mal’s place had things gone according to what was planned years and years ago. If Ben hadn’t flipped the script on them all.

(If Ben hadn’t freed them all.)

“You two look wonderful,” Audrey says, but this time she knows she means it. No one could deny how happy and in love Ben and Mal were.

(Sometimes, it was sickening.)

“So do you,” Ben says, his eyes meeting hers and telling her the things he couldn’t say. Audrey gets it. Chad clears his throat, gone silent for too long, and Ben raises his eyes to his friend and laughs when he sees what he’s wearing. “You look dashing too, Chad. Is that supposed to be my crown?”

“ _My_ crown, Benjamin.” Chad corrects, “Anyway, this has been sweet, but I believe Audrey and I are ready to dance to the music?”

Audrey catches the underlying words and smiles minimally as Ben and Mal frown confusedly. “As opposed to dance to what?” Mal asks before she can help it, and Chad only gives her a sardonic smile as he begins to push Audrey away.

“Bye, guys,” Audrey throws over her shoulder as Chad leads her down the stairs and the couple wave at her with smiles on their faces.

Something about it feels… freeing. Not completely, but like it could be a new beginning.

* * *

The party’s dying down and Audrey finds Evie by the mural Ben had made, where he stands before a purple haired Mal and a beautiful gown and a smile on her face. Evie’s eyes are studying the image in front of her with what Audrey thinks looks like sadness.

She stands beside Evie and looks at the painting herself, looking at it the same way someone would look straight down the barrel of a gun, or the same way one would stare at the deep sea as they stand on the end of a plank. It all but solidifies what Chad had told her earlier; change did catch up to you one way or another, no matter how much you ran from it.

It was time that Audrey stopped agonizing over what could’ve been. It was time she moved on, fully and completely.

But God, she didn’t even know where to start!

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Evie asks her suddenly, her voice low. Audrey doesn’t need to look at her to know that her eyes are still reflecting _purple, purple, purple_.

“Yeah,” Audrey agrees, because it is. It’s a beautiful artwork. But she knows that Evie doesn’t mean the craftsmanship.

“True love,” Evie states, and it’s like her mind is taking her somewhere that Audrey doesn’t know, hasn’t seen. A memory that it was just Evie and Mal’s, and not Audrey’s to know or see.

“Do you believe that?” Audrey asks, almost surprised. She doesn’t know why she’s never expected a Villain Kid to believe in True Love.

(Maybe because she, herself, wasn’t so convinced it existed.)

“Believe what? True Love?” Evie clarifies, and Audrey nods. The blue haired girl shrugs, “I’d like to believe so. It’d be sad if it didn’t exist.”

“How come?” Audrey asks, because she needs to know. Needs to have a direction, a new perspective.

Evie shrugs again, “It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To not have to plan? To just… be.”

“God, yeah,” Audrey agrees prontly, exhaling, “It would be great, actually.”

Evie chuckles at her reaction and then her tone turns somber, “I’d just… I don’t know. I’d like there to be someone for me. Someone I can truly be myself with and know that they will love me no matter what. Like... like Ben loves Mal. That kind of perfect match.”

The words sting at Audrey a bit, but she realizes that they sting because of how much she can relate to the sentiment.

“What about Doug?” She asks, curious. Evie winces a little at the name before she meets Audrey’s eyes with her brown ones that are filled with emotions that Audrey can recognize because she _knows_ they’re mirroring many of the emotions Audrey had reflected through hers whenever people asked her about Chad.

“Doug is…” Evie trails off, exhales, closes her eyes and tries again, “there.”

Audrey nods. “I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah,” Audrey lets out a deep breath, “I do.”

They fall in silence again and Audrey wonders if Evie feels _weird_ when she tries to be _perfect_ sometimes and if that feeling is always as suffocating for her as it is for Audrey.

* * *

 

The next few months in Audrey’s life are different and filled with laughter and tears and trips and falls and everything else that she’d never allowed herself to experience. She changes her hair, she picks up new after school activities and spends more time with her friends. She doesn’t date, doesn’t think about dating, and most days she goes to bed with a smile on her face when she realizes she hasn’t thought about _weird_ or _perfect_ for a whole day. She’s content when she realizes that she’s able to spend an entire day just being _Audrey._

It feels like progress.

And then Ben proposes to Mal in front of everyone and she trips and falls and wonder how the hell she’s going to get back up again if she’s just going to relapse every time something like this happens.

* * *

She’s not quite sure how it happened; she’s not quite sure of _what_ even happened. All she remembers is that one moment she was conscious, wide awake, and then the next it was just darkness.

It didn’t feel like sleeping, not exactly. It was a bit like being unconscious, but still with a thin, almost barely there grasp in your consciousness that you’re _at least_ aware that something is happening.

She can hear voices; they sound distant and they echo in the darkness, and Audrey tries to respond but can’t. There’s no way to reach them, to call out.

(Audrey thinks this feels like a heightened version of sleep paralysis. It’s something that she’s had since she was a kid. Inherited from her mother, they said.)

She feels nothing, feels surrounded by darkness, and then she feels a little warmth on her wrist and the darkness isn’t so suffocating. She hears the voices and the echoes again, and she tries to tell them whatever they were doing was working, to keep doing it, but the warmth stays for maybe an hour after the voices stop and then it leaves completely and then it's just back to the empty darkness.

* * *

When she wakes up, her eyes open and there’s a flash of light hitting her eyes before she gets used to being conscious again. The setting around her surprises her for many reasons; one, she’s not lying down on her bed or anything of the sort. No, she’s standing in what looks like the middle of a forest, and from the corner of her eyes she notices the people standing around her, watching, waiting.

Two, her body feels heavy. She’s in clothes she doesn’t remember wearing, with a weight she doesn’t recognize. Her body is tired, and she feels like she’s been through hell and back without even realizing.

Three, Evie’s standing in front of her. Her face very close to hers, actually, and her red full lips are somewhat pursed, as if she’d just given someone a kiss.

And then it downs on Audrey.

Her own lips are tingling and warm and her face is flushed, and her entire body feels as if awaken from a slumber. The darkness and the echoed voices are no more, and instead, her brown eyes are looking deep into Evie’s brown eyes and all she sees is _pink, pink, pink_ reflected back at her and she knows that what Evie sees staring back at her is _blue, blue, blue._

“Perfect match,” Evie tells her.

Audrey smiles.

“Not perfect,” she disagrees, softly, thoughtful.

( _Perfect_ is overrated. _Perfect_ means marrying a prince, becoming a queen, ruling Auradon together. _Perfect_ means pretending to be happy with that plan. _Perfect_ means she’s lost when the plan doesn’t work. _Perfect_ means lying to everybody, including herself.)

(Evie seems to understand. She always does.)

Audrey exhales.

She doesn’t know what this means. She doesn’t know where this will lead, she doesn’t have a plan, never even _imagined_ this would happen. Would her prince be actually a fallen princess from the Isle? Was that the destiny's plan of how Audrey's life should unfold? She just _doesn’t know_. No clue at all!

And it’s _so, so, so_ exciting.

She laughs, breathless, and it feels like she’s dreaming, but she knows it’s real.

“It’s way better.”

**Author's Note:**

> Soooooo. That was that! I hope you enjoyed it! Have a nice week & just letting you all know I love love love comments :') 
> 
> This might become a two parter for Evie's pov, but that's up in the air! Tell me what you thought here or at @eviegrimhildes on tumblr. Thank you for reading! <3


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